I preclude that I've not tried it yet. I just got the link from my Lockergnome newsletter. The program:
Photobie
Supposedly it can run
PS plugins too. By the way, it's 100% free. May be a contender for replace Elements (or more). Just a heads up.
Edit:
Well I downloaded it and gave it a whirl. Not going to be an Elements replacement any time soon. Can't even drag and drop. Still think it's much more powerful then Paint.NET and again, it's free. Unfortunately (may be doing something wrong) Impressionist and Paint Engine doesn't work in it (not surprised since these don't work in GIMP either). May not be worth the download, but at least I gave it a shot. Since it heavily depends on the .NET framework, it's only a little over 2M in size too.